


it's not so wrong to wish on space hardware

by Dorkangel



Series: little and broken and still good [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Furiosa, Cancer, Character Study, Chemotherapy, Child Neglect, Drug Use, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Issues, Fluff and Angst, Gang Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Max has never spoken more than seven words at a time and never will, Mentions of Cancer, Nux Lives, Nux is a cutie, Nux is messed up, Recreational Drug Use, Sad with a Happy Ending, Slit is not a good older brother, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Team as Family, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-04 21:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4154421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that Nux has a bad life. It's really not.<br/>It's just that his parents left him with his brother and his brother's a violent asshole addicted to chrome who doesn't care about him and he's stuck in a dangerous gang he wants no part of and he can barely read and also he's dying of cancer and the chemo makes him feel like shit and he's going to die anyway so it's all so so so pointless-<br/>Alright, so maybe Nux has a bad life.</p><p>But Capable makes him feel like a real person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's not so wrong to wish on space hardware

**Author's Note:**

> So this started off as a character study for modern!Nux and spiralled. Please check the warnings, although I promise there's no explicit violence and it ends happily.

It's not that Nux comes from a broken home. In order for it to be broken there has to be something there to begin with, and he doesn't think there ever was.  
Nux isn't stupid. He knows where babies come from, and he knows that he must have been a baby once, and that that means he must have had a mum and a dad. The thing is that he doesn't remember them. At all. Not one thing.  
Slit's his brother, he knows that, and Slit's a pretty good brother, he guesses. He's got to be because Nux has been living with him for... well, forever (he thinks), and he's not dead. Yet. Sometimes Slit used to forget about feeding him and stuff, but that was alright because Nux got free meals at school anyway, so he never starved. And if Slit didn't buy him new clothes, he'd just keep wearing his old ones. It wasn't like it mattered, anyway. He wasn't naked or anything, you could just see his ankles and his wrists and his midriff.  
Slit has a job as well, which is better than most people in Nux's building, even if it is not-technically-legal-don't-tell-you-little-shit-alright. He's a gunner for Immortan Joe.  
Nux doesn't really know how he feels about that. Immortan Joe- he loves Joe. Of course he does, he's a War Boy! Joe's their leader, and they don't have to follow anyone's rules or do what anyone says apart from Joe. They're wild, some people say, but most people just say crazy. Not in front of the War Boys, of course, because that would be asking to get shot.  
On the other hand, though, Joe kills people. Innocent people. Police officers just trying to keep people safe. Passersby who happened to see something they weren't meant to. Even members of his own gang who so much as say the wrong thing. And that scares Nux, badly. He might be a War Boy, but it's not by choice - Slit's a War Boy; Nux has got to be one too - and it's not something he likes. Nux likes baking and cheesy T.V. and gardening and fast cars, and the only one of those things he gets out of Immortan Joe is the fast cars, which he's really too young to drive. He wants to quit.  
But you don't just get to quit being a War Boy. You've got to defect to another gang (The Bullet Farmers and the Gas Towners and the Rock Riders are all just as bad though, and Nux is a skilled mechanic but he's only a kid, so they probably wouldn't want him anyway), or run far away (but where would he go? He's never even left the Citadel), or die.  
Nux doesn't want to die. Among the War Boys, dying means going to heaven, 'cos Joe says when you make yourself a martyr you're putting yourself in a for a good time Up There. There are days when Nux swallows that without protest and cheers along with the rest of them, and there are days when he stares at the floor and says nothing, because he's not even seventeen yet and _he doesn't want to die like this_.  
Nux is quiet enough that he doesn't quite show up on Joe's radar more than once in a blue moon, which is good. Don't get noticed, don't get caught out. He's quiet enough that the teachers' eyes at school just scan over him blankly, because he's just another gang kid who's going to die in a car crash at the age of twenty three or so, he's a lost cause, it's not their fault if he doesn't learn anything. (It's not, but it's not that he's a gang kid either. Him and Slit both can't make sense of the letters on the paper. They don't stay in the right order.) He's quiet enough that when Slit snorts 'chrome' - not the metal, the drug, made up of a shiny powder that makes Nux dread even glitter at the thought of it - he can just hide in his room and pretend it's all one sixteen year long nightmare. Slit gets pretty mad pretty easy when he drinks, but not as bad as when he uses chrome. Nux actually _likes_ learning, so he doesn't really truant very often, but when he was younger and Slit got on that weird, crazy-eyed, suicidal, angry high on a school night, he'd play hooky for a few days. Just to wait for the bruises to fade.  
Anyway, his home isn't _broken_. Slit cares about him, he knows he does. Why else would he pay for Nux's chemotherapy?  
Look, it's not some great tragedy, the cancer. Like Joe says: everyone's dying, all the time. Nux is just dying a little faster.  
He found the tumours two years ago, and he hadn't thought they were anything serious at first. He had two lumps on his neck, that was all, so he painted smiley faces on them and called them Larry and Barry as a joke. It took a while for him to realise that Larry and Barry were chewing on his windpipe, blocking off his air.  
Joe's medic, the guy who fixes them up when they crash - although Nux doesn't think he ever to medical school, because the War Boys are all covered in jagged, messy scars, and also Nux is pretty sure he harvests people's organs on the side - noticed him wheezing after a chase one day, saw Larry and Barry, and put two and two together. For once, it didn't make five.  
"You got a pretty nasty cancer there, kid." the Organic Mechanic had told him, casual as anything. "You'd better get it looked at, or I wouldn't put any money on your chances."  
Nux remembers the sensation he got at that - like all the blood had drained out of his face and all the hope had drained out of his heart. Like he was an engine without any gas. He got the same one when the doctor confirmed it, and it was almost worse because Slit was there to hear it too.  
Slit had said "No treatment's too good for my baby brother!" and clapped him on the back, but Nux still knows he's going to die. He's stupid, stupid, stupid, he should have gone to the doctor earlier, or even the Organic Mechanic, not painted stupid faces on them.  
Slit pays for the chemo and it's the most generous thing he's ever done for his brother. Nux sits around in the hospital, because it's not that his home is broken, it's just that even the hospital is better than home.  
One time, the first time his hair started falling out - the War Boys wear their hair short anyway, so it's not like anyone notices. Only Nux does - Joe and all the most important War Boys visited him in the hospital. They called him brave and said he was going to heaven, and Nux grinned back, but he knew it wasn't true. He's not brave; Larry and Barry scare him so bad that he wakes up at night in a cold sweat. He's terrified of dying. He throws up with the chemo and he feels like shit and he hates it. And he's not going to heaven because he's a shitty War Boy doing dumb things to good people just because Joe says so and it's wrong it's wrong it's wrong, Immortan Joe is a _liar_ -  
Recently, Slit's been using chrome more and more. Nux thinks he's dependant on it. And it's ok, because Nux isn't a baby anymore, he doesn't need looking after, so Slit really isn't a bad older brother. He isn't.  
(Maybe if Nux keeps repeating that over and over it'll make it true.)  
What it means is that Nux doesn't want to go home. Ever, if possible. The last time he went back to their cramped little flat, Slit smacked him, hard, and now there's a painful shadow of a bruise around his left eye. He tried fixing up his old car, but he almost dropped unconscious with the exhaustion.  
So he's back at the hospital. One of the nurses, Miss Giddy, she's vaguely sympathetic to him, and she lets him sit quietly in the corner.  
They've given him pills; Steroids. More chemo. Sleeping pills.  
Nux stares at them, blinks, and just thinks _I don't want to die_. That's the only reason he does anything anymore, really. That fear.  
_But it's not true_ , hisses a voice in his head. It's either Larry or Barry. They like to whisper things like that to him. They're mean like that.  _It's not that we don't want to die. We just don't want to die like **this**. Sick and pathetic. We don't want to die a War Boy_.  
"I'm not a War Boy." he murmurs, out loud. He's not sure if it feels good to say that or if he feels guilty.  
He keeps staring at the loose pills in the palm of his hand.  
Nux has never set foot in a church or read the bible, but he knows about heaven and hell. Immortan Joe tells them all about it, and Nux thinks Joe twists it a bit, but he understands the general idea nonetheless. Good = Heaven. Bad = Hell.  
Nux has hurt people, and stolen stuff, and done other bad things, and Slit and Joe and Rictus and everyone else don't seem to have a problem with it, but that doesn't make them right...  
_I'm going to hell anyway_ , he thinks, and swallows the pills.  
All of them.  
It's too many. _I'm going to die_ , he realises, and isn't scared at all. _It's not going to hurt. They're not going to bury me a War Boy_.  
"Nux?" asks Miss Giddy's voice, distorted slightly. "Are you alright?"  
"Better than usual." he grins back, too sharp and quick to look totally sane. "Shiny."  
Shiny like chrome. Shiny like suicidal and brave for no reason other than he's going to die.  
_I should make sure people know I'm not a War Boy anymore_ , he thinks, and maybe it's the pills but the idea he has next makes perfect sense.  
"Well, that's good-" Miss Giddy is saying. He stands up suddenly, cutting her off.  
"Have you got a pen?"

*

Nux says he's feeling restless, with the steroids, and she smiles and says that's a good sign, and agrees when he asks to go for a walk. He's glad he's made Miss Giddy happy, at least. She's nice and her tattoos are pretty.  
On his hand, he's written I ENT A WAR BOY. He's going to sit down and write it on his arms as well when his legs go numb. Like Socrates. Socrates took poison, and then he walked until his legs went numb, and then he lay down and died. Nux heard his history teacher say so.  
Nux doesn't know who Socrates was. He wonders why Socrates had to die. Did he have a shitty brother, like Nux? Was he sick too?  
(Nux doesn't have to pretend to love Slit anymore. He hates Slit. Slit is an awful brother. He _hates_ him. Nux comes from a broken home, and he hates his parents for leaving him there, with Slit and his chrome addiction and his neglect and his angry words and his swinging fists.)  
There's really no reason to stay in the area of the Citadel he comes from, so Nux shoves his hands into the huge pockets of his cargo pants and walks towards the Green Place. It's getting dark by now, but the Green Place doesn't look scary even in the dark.  
It's a sanctuary here- or so he's heard people say. The gangs avoid it because the Vuvalini protect it and they're mostly getting old now but they're still all Hard As Nails. It's full of grassy parks and trees by the road, and people grow their own vegetables. The Vuvalini zoom around on their bikes and all, but they don't hurt people, so families come and live here.  
No one here'll recognise him on sight. No one'll say 'That's Nux! That's that War Boy with the tumours!'. He can just lie down next to the trees and curl up and die and no one will know anything about where he comes from or who he is.  
He's happy to die here.

It's got to be nearly eleven at night when his sight blurs badly enough that he can't walk. His head is pounding, the same with his heart, and his stomach is churning.  
This isn't how Nux thought it would be.  
(It's still better than letting Larry and Barry get him.)  
When he stumbles and his foot catches on a tree root, he doesn't get up. Instead, he lies on his back and takes one last look at the stars.  
"I saw two shooting stars last night," he hums, exhausted. It's the lyrics to some old song that Slit likes. "I wished on them, but they were only satellites,"  
Nux forces himself to lay out his left palm flat and closes his eyes.  
He's not sorry. Maybe he's a little sad about it all, but he's not sorry. He's just a former War Boy who failed school and watches bad T.V. and doesn't have any family he cares about. Sure, Nux can fix up an engine, but what else is he good for? Nothing.  
No one's gonna miss him.

*

 _"Max, oh god, Max, there's some poor kid here-"_  
_"I think he OD'd-"_  
_"Call Furiosa, get her over here-"_  
_"Kid? Can you hear us?"_  
_"Don't let him fall asleep again-"_  
_"It says he's not a War Boy."_  
_"Get him up, c'mon, quickly-"_

*

Nux wakes up, and it's the most expected thing he's ever done. He's not at home, at least, he's somewhere soft and cool, but he knows it isn't heaven because he _hurts_. His stomach aches powerfully and his head feels like it's on fire and his throat is dry as sandpaper.  
_Pain tells you that you're alive_ , laughs Larry or Barry cruelly.  
"Shut up." Nux whines back, limply. "Shut up, shut up."  
He doesn't want to be alive.  
"Hey,"  
The voice above him is rough and grating, but it's trying to be gentle. That's more than Nux is used to.  
There's a pause for a moment, and he still doesn't open his eyes. It's almost like the voice is trying to work out how to speak again, if the frustrated little huffs of breath are anything to go by.  
"You alright?" grunts the voice.  
Nux forces one eye open to squint at its owner. Messy hair. Puppy eyes. Leather jacket over a cop's uniform.  
"Not dead." It's not a question, and Nux doesn't phrase it like one. He just says the words in a grin monotone.  
_Only I'd be able to fuck up dying_ , he thinks, and grimaces.  
"Yes, uh." The man says haltingly, his brows furrowed. Nux thinks he must have some kind of problem with his speech, like his brain is thinking the words but his mouth can't quite keep up. "If you hurt our family, you will be though. Dead."  
He taps a hand on his pistol, almost fondly. Nux nods numbly, gets an affirmative grunt from the man, and closes his eyes again.  
When he opens them again, someone else is sitting on the bed next to him, a soft hand on his patchy stubble. She's tall and redheaded and she's wearing a big, comfy looking poncho. This is probably her room, he thinks, and shuffles away from her a bit. He doesn't want to get in the way.  
"Max probably scared you a bit." she murmurs, the sound so quiet it scarcely to the air. "He's like that, all tough and all. Scared me a bit too at first."  
"Is he your dad?" Nux wonders out loud. And then he winces, because Larry and Barry just made themselves known again.  
They're still gonna get him, oh god.  
"Kind of." she shrugs.  
When Nux doesn't reply, she tilts her head to one side and trails her hand down to his palm. Slit was never touchy-feely, so he's not used to it, but he doesn't protest. There weren't many girls among the War Boys- maybe it's a girl thing?  
"Why did you write this?"  
I ENT A WAR BOY.  
How's he supposed to explain that? 'Well, I got cancer on my neck and my brother's a War Boy but I never wanted to be and I'm dying so I ran away and tried to die quicker but I didn't want nobody to think I was a War Boy when I don't want to be'.  
Instead of saying that, he says nothing.  
"I'm Capable." she says, accepting of his silence. "As in, my name, not an adjective."  
"Nux. Like Nuts and Bolts."  
Slit says that's why he's called Nux, anyway. Nux doesn't think that's what his parents called him.  
"Nux." she echoes. It sounds nicer when she says it. "Did you do that to yourself, Nux? Take the pills?"  
He takes a deep breath and spits it out. "Wanted to die. M'dying anyway."  
She glances visibly towards Larry and Barry, and seems to understand.  
"I'm going to go now." she says slowly. "Just for a moment, ok?"  
Nux doesn't want Capable to go. She's quiet, and sweet, and kind.  
He knows that what he wants doesn't really matter, so he just lets her.  
The room he's in is a lot nicer than his room back at Slit's apartment. There's light coming in through the window, so maybe the lamp doesn't actually work, but it sure looks nicer than the swinging bulb with it's bare wires than he has at home, and the walls are a gentle kind of mint that seems calming. It's all unfamiliar.  
What _is_ familiar is the arguing he can't help but overhear from out in the hall.  
"He's a fucking War Boy!" someone is yelling, and he cringes.  
"Language, Toast."  
"Furiosa, back me up. Everyone deserves a second chance, you're always saying so."  
"It's not like he can hurt us."  
"Wow, Cheedo. Really?! After everything that's happened, you want to bring some insane _man_ into our lives?!"  
"He tried to kill himself, we can't just leave him!"  
"It's not our problem. He's not our problem."  
_I don't matter. I'm dying anyway. Even Joe only needed me for cannon fodder._  
Nux folds in even tighter on himself and covers his ears.  
"You want to send him back to the shit-stain he's running away from, Toast?"  
"Why not?"  
" _Why not?"_ He recognises Capable's voice, even with his hands over his ears, twisted with rage. "How is he any different from Angharad?!"  
For some reason that silences them.  
The next thing that Nux hears is the soft padding of bare feet against the wooden floor. It's all too reminiscent of listening to Slit's angry pacing when he snorted chrome, hiding under the bed, but he barely has time to feel scared before a young woman appears at the door in a quick whoosh of long blonde hair and maternity wear. One of the first things he notices about her is her swollen belly, then her eyes, - sharp, like a knife, like the edge of a razor - and then the raised scars crisscrossing her arms and her face.  
Nux isn't stupid. He knows how people end up with those kind of scars, and it makes him wonder how the pretty pregnant woman in the doorframe got as low as he did and took a knife to her own skin.  
She stares right into him. He stares helplessly back.  
"This is the house of the Vuvalini." she tells him; her voice is like silk over steel, no less sturdy for its gentleness. "The original ones that are left. What do you know about the Vuvalini?"  
Not much, really. They're an all-female biker gang, and they own one big truck as well. They protect the Green Place. Slit used to call them 'Hell's Grannies'. Miss Giddy calls them 'Matriarchs on Motorcycles' with awe in her voice.  
"Hard As Nails." he replies, unsure of how to phrase what he's thinking. The woman at the door nods perfectly calmly.  
"They are that. Are you a War Boy, Nuts?"  
She's saying his name wrong, but he's too busy frantically shaking his head to correct her.  
"Didn't want to be buried as one." he explains, almost guiltily, the words too fast. "Got cancer. Don't want to hurt people."  
She nods and moves away again.  
Nux frowns and tries to work out why they haven't thrown him out yet.

"He's staying."  
"What?!"  
"No arguments." That voice is sterner than the other ones he can hear. "If Angharad trusts him, that's good enough for me."  
It's Capable who hurries back into the room, grinning. She seems even happier than he is at this whole thing- maybe because Nux can't get over the hopelessness in the pit of his stomach. They can't really want him here. They don't want him here. He heard them say it.  
"It's going to be okay," she whispers, remembering to tone it down for him a little. "You can stay. Angharad - she's like my sister - convinced Toast and Furiosa and the others."  
He thinks of the Angharad that he met, just for a moment, and of the determination in her face, and the hopelessness begins to dissipate. For once, Nux's smile doesn't have that cruel edge of crazy to it.

*

So, yeah, Nux might come from a home that's all too broken. He's not ashamed to say it anymore. Of course, he's not proud of his past either, and he still hates his brother (Slit hasn't even tried to look for him since he swallowed all those pills, and Nux knows it's partially because the Vuvalini told Miss Giddy to tell the War Boys that he tried to kill himself, and then stretch the truth a bit and say that it actually worked, but it still stings like a knife in his ribs that his only flesh and blood could ever care so little about him), but he's not ashamed of it anymore.  
Capable's a year older than him, but Max and Furiosa don't seem to care that they're together. It's as though they're her parents, he supposes, only they're a lot more relaxed than any kind of nuclear unit that TV has taught him is normal. Maybe her family is a little odd, but not in a bad way at all.  
There's tiny, fragile Cheedo, barely fourteen, who vouched for him but skirts nervously around him, like she wants to trust him but just can't. The Dag - no one has ever felt the need to explain to Nux why her name is prefixed with a 'the', so he just accepts it - seems to have assigned herself to protect her, though, and the Dag is the second youngest (under Nux, over Cheedo) but she spits curse words and burns incense like it personally offended her, and all her ethereal floatiness means nothing when she's threatening to give you internal bleeding, so Cheedo seems pretty safe from all dangers. Toast is nineteen and small with it, and she was the one most violently opposed to Nux's being there with them, but she sits herself down next to him at the table and chats moodily, and it doesn't take Nux too long to realise that that's just the way Toast is: wary to the point of anger. Angharad... Well, Nux sticks to his original impression of her. Silk over steel.  
Furiosa is one of the Vuvalini, through and through. She's like a slightly scary mother hen, gathering her chicks around her and pecking out the eyes of anyone who gets in the way. She lost her arm in a crash a while ago, but it doesn't make her any less able to drive, and she keeps her hair shaved almost to the scalp, but it doesn't make her any less magnificent. Max lives in her shadow, which is fine because he seems to like it there. It's cool and pleasantly dark and he gets to be near her.  
And for the first time in his life, Nux doesn't feel like he's living a lie. He doesn't have to pretend he likes weapons and violence and hurting people (Toast entertains herself with her Swiss army knife and her pistol, and she, Angharad, Capable, and Furiosa all enjoy an action film, but they change the channel and put away the pointy stuff when Nux walks into the room, just the same as they do for Max and the Dag and Cheedo, and he kind of wants to happy-cry at that) or that Larry and Barry don't frighten him. He doesn't have to be afraid of Slit, or agree blindly with whatever the gang-leaders say.  
All he has to do is curl up with Capable on the couch and watch cheesy TV and help the Dag with the gardening or Furiosa with her fast car.

  
Now, when Nux says his home isn't broken, he's not lying.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from 'A New England' by Billy Bragg, and is also the lines Nux was singing. I thought it fitted because of the satellite scene in the movie.
> 
> I saw two shooting stars last night/I wished on them/But they were only satellites!/It's wrong to wish on space hardware/I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care.


End file.
